Greenmantle - John Buchan

a poor cold place,' said Peter, 'not worth fighting for. There is only one white
man's land, and that is South Africa.' At the time I heartily agreed with him.
I remember that, sitting on the edge of my bed, I took stock of our position. It
was not very cheering. We seemed to have been amassing enemies at a furious
pace. First of all, there was Rasta, whom I had insulted and who wouldn't forget
it in a hurry. He had his crowd of Turkish riff-raff and was bound to get us
sooner or later. Then there was the maniac in the skin hat. He didn't like Rasta,
and I made a guess that he and his weird friends were of some party hostile to
the Young Turks. But, on the other hand, he didn't like us, and there would be
bad trouble the next time we met him. Finally, there was Stumm and the German
Government. It could only be a matter of hours at the best before he got the
Rustchuk authorities on our trail. It would be easy to trace us from Chataldja,
and once they had us we were absolutely done. There was a big black dossier
against us, which by no conceivable piece of luck could be upset.
It was very clear to me that, unless we could find sanctuary and shed all our
various pursuers during this day, we should be done in for good and all. But
where on earth were we to find sanctuary? We had neither of us a word of the
language, and there was no way I could see of taking on new characters. For that
we wanted friends and help, and I could think of none anywhere. Somewhere, to
be sure, there was Blenkiron, but how could we get in touch with him? As for
Sandy, I had pretty well given him up. I always thought his enterprise the
craziest of the lot and bound to fail. He was probably somewhere in Asia Minor,
and a month or two later would get to Constantinople and hear in some pothouse
the yarn of the two wretched Dutchmen who had disappeared so soon
from men's sight.
That rendezvous at Kuprasso's was no good. It would have been all right if
we had got here unsuspected, and could have gone on quietly frequenting the
place till Blenkiron picked us up. But to do that we wanted leisure and secrecy,
and here we were with a pack of hounds at our heels. The place was horribly
dangerous already. If we showed ourselves there we should be gathered in by
Rasta, or by the German military police, or by the madman in the skin cap. It
was a stark impossibility to hang about on the off-chance of meeting Blenkiron.
I reflected with some bitterness that this was the 17th day of January, the day
of our assignation. I had had high hopes all the way down the Danube of meeting
with Blenkiron—for I knew he would be in time—of giving him the information